Article claims thousands of Indiana voter registrations purged
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — An online news article claiming Indiana purged thousands of voters from the state’s voter rolls has prompted a national discussion.
Statehouse Bureau Chief David Williams investigated the claims on Monday.
The article claims the registrations of nearly a half-million Indiana voters have been pulled from the registration books.
News 8 sent the site to several state officials to get their take on it.
Author Rebecca Traister brought up the topic Friday night on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
“Look at the voting headlines from this week. This is really key to why we win and lose,” Traister said on the show. “53,000 voters being suppressed by Brian Kemp in Georgia. Seventy percent of them black. Four hundred and seventy thousand voters purged in Indiana.”
The site claims thousands of Hoosier voters’ registrations were removed from the system, using what it calls “suspect methods.”
The article said an unnamed “Indiana Official” told them some counties inadvertently canceled voters based on 2017 legislation.
According to the Indiana ACLU, this summer a federal judge temporarily blocked the state of Indiana from enforcing a 2017 law that would allow election officials to remove voters from the rolls if the registration was flagged by a tracking system called Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck.
Jan Mensz, a staff attorney with the Indiana ACLU, provided this statement about the article on Monday:
“We are concerned anytime there are allegations that voters have been improperly removed from the voter rolls, and are investigating these recent reports. Although the District Court in our case has enjoined Indiana from using Crosscheck as a sole basis for immediate cancelation, there remain other permissible procedures for removing registration records that could explain these reports.”
Valerie Warycha, deputy chief of staff for Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, released this statement on Monday:
“We are aware of this story making the rounds online and we have reported it to Facebook and Twitter’s fake news section. This story is not true. You can always check your registration at Indianavoters.com.”
Julia Vaughn, the Indiana policy director at nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause provided this statement about the claims on Monday:
“On Friday, Common Cause Indiana was notified that a national website is claiming that 20,000 Hoosiers voters were purged without proper notice and despite a federal court order forbidding voters from being purged without the process required by federal law. Since last week we have been trying to gather more information about this but cannot say right now whether or not these allegations are accurate. Common Cause Indiana will issue a statement when we can either confirm or correct this story. Voters can check their voter registration at http://www.indianavoters.in.gov.”
On Monday, the co-directors of the Marion County Board of Voter Registration, Democrat LaDonna Freeman and Republican Cindy Mowery said they had received calls from people hearing rumors their registration’s purged. The Directors told us they do cancel voters but don’t purge or delete them. You can be canceled for example, if you die, move out of state or haven’t voted in the last 2 Federal elections.
Those directors said if you find out your registration is canceled, you can easily be reinstated. Just call the voter registration office in your county.
Freeman and Mowery said it’s important to search for the name you are registered under — for example, if you registered as Elizabeth but searched with Beth, you wouldn’t necessarily find yourself listed in the voter rolls.
You can check your registration here.
The article’s author said he’d email News 8 for comment, but we had not heard back on Monday night.